Blood and Water Ch 1 : The Squire
Dear reader, I am not G.R.R.M, as such I own none of this story. The first quote is from his work, The World of Ice and Fire. You might see a massive dropoff in quality once you stop reading that quote. Even still, thank you for reading.
"Lord Quellon had spent most of his long reign avoiding war; Lord Balon began at once preparing for it. For more than gold or glory, Balon Greyjoy lusted for a crown. This dream of crowns has seemed to haunt House Greyjoy throughout its long history. Oft as not, it ends in defeat, despair, and death, as it did for Balon Greyjoy. For five years he prepared, gathering men and longships, and building a great fleet of massive warships with reinforced hulls and iron rams, their decks bristling with scorpions and spitfires. The ships of this Iron Fleet were more galleys than longships, larger than any that the ironmen had built before." – Maester Yandel
When you built a knight, you built him from the ground up. And so, the articulated sabatons were the first of the steel to adorn his body, fastened over his leather shoes. They were crafted to be wonderfully pliable and moved, as a foot would, with the ankles. The greaves and cuisses were next, atop hose and braes, they enclosed the legs in a steely embrace meeting at the knees with a poleyn that presented deadly spiked flanges that flayed unarmored foes.
Ser Brynden had awoken in his arming clothes, sparing his squires one more dexterous task in the cold wet morning. He sat upon a low seat, affixing mail onto the arms of his jacket as Edmure and Clement tied the laces holding the cuisses to the well-worn garment.
"Tighter around the left leg lad, I don't want it coming loose when some iron mongrel charges me."
Dutifully, Clement worked on the offending greave while Oustin brought in yesterday's bread, along with goat cheese from the Seagard stores and his uncles favourite wine.
"Are we to lay siege to the town Ser?" Edmure asked while his hands were occupied with Ser Bryndens arm harness.
"That council of fools last night were set upon it yes but we lack one essential resource for it." He took the wine in hand "Tell me Gavin, you know from our prickers the lay of the land, how does our little army siege Oretown"
"Engines of war my lord? Trebuchets and Onagers?" The young page asked, looking for aid among his senior squires. Ser Brynden frowned as he stood, north of six feet, the man towered over the youths in his company.
His eyes passed over Edmure and he gestured to the armor for his chest and back. The fish like scale patterns of his upper arm harness gleamed prettily, blue and red in the light of the flame. He flexed and bent his arms. "Where would we lay our engines? Where would we gather the lumber for the sappers and the tunnels?"
Oustin sputtered but the squires offered no help. 'You have to swim this current alone, cousin.' Edmure thought. This is a test we all take.
"There is patch of forest west of the town my lord. We fortify our enginers there?" There was some foresight there Edmure thought, it showed he had the mind to put thoughts into war craft.
The knight's windswept face still held his frown. "A siege with four major castles at our backs, bristling with men?"
Oustin perked up, there was defiance in his brown eyes. "We have almost a hundred knights and their lances, with more arriving by the day."
"The reavers had a little less than half their iron fleet escape, when Stannis smashed them. Many and more will have scurried to their own holdfasts. They know these isles and these rocks, these waters and these winds like the backs of their hands. Do we fight them man for man when they come for us?"
"Every river man is worth ten of these reavers my lord." Oustin persisted, but Ser Brynden was done with his lesson.
"Listen here lad, it doesn't matter whether a man fights under a Tully banner or a Kraken, we all bleed when we are pricked. No, neither side lacks for quality of men in a crush."
He turned to the groom who stood at the mouth of the tent "Fetch our horses."
"We do not lack for the skill at arms, nor the men nor even the gold, we lack for time." He turned to his students at war. "There are, firstly, no trees here that can sustain engines large enough to threaten those walls. Secondly, King Robert does not have the time to waste away years to take these salty seven damned isles through a protracted siege."
"A storming action Ser." Edmure said. He had seen the instruments loaded upon their war galleys at Seagard. They were long things, the siege ladders, even when they were broken apart. Bound together, one could imagine they could extend over the walls of the town several times over.
Ser Brynden nodded. "And who is to climb those ladders?"
Clement rose, "Give unto me the honor to be first among the attackers Master."
Ser Brynden laughed, and chastised him as one would a son. "Make no mistake, you will be going in, only it shall be behind me. Hoster would have my hide if I lost both his heir and a son of Pinkmaiden scaling some fish fuckers' walls." In a certain way, every person in that tent could have been taken for a Tully. All four sported the red coloring.
"Shall we arm as well then lord?" Clement said, the helm in his arms glistened black from the polishing.
"Yes, though the day is for the parlay and a closer look at their walls. We will see if there is a better place to put up our ladders though I have already my mind set upon a place."
They flipped a gold dragon among themselves, and it was Edmure who would serve beside Ser Brynden to offer terms while Clement went with the outriders. A banner with the Crowned Stag of Baratheon flew behind them as the Dark walls of the town grew to their appreciable height. They were not in range of yewshot as per Ser Brynden but the outer town was still a cautious subject. Edmure worried at hidden ambushes in the abandoned homes and hovels.
Ser Brynden considers them men only so far as he can throw them Edmure thought. We will wait here it seems, flying the Blackfish and the Stag till they are forced to come. And if they don't we still assess their walls.
The crisp smell of the beach was overwhelmed with smokefire and salted fish. The earthy smell of good oak mixed with tar and the scent of beast and man mingled around him. It smelled wrong to Edmure, no underbrush no rot, not even the simple smell of tilled soil. The town had a hasty ditch dug around it, but other than that the garrison seemed to be satisfied to sit upon the walls training their missiles upon the knightly party.
They rode with the knights that made up last nights council. Ser Robin Ryger, the Captain of Riverrun was present, sat atop a steed pale as his own hair but much less ancient. Ser Jarmon Mallister joked with his foster brother Benjicot of Ravenwood, Jonar Chambers, and Gavin of Goodbrook made up their number. They were, all of them men, Edmure had waited upon before, but the feast the night before had been more memorable than most for the amount of war craft they talked on. Ser Ryger, Chambers Goodbrook and Benjicot argued for starving the town out but Mallister sided with Ser Brynden.
When the gates finally opened the sun had finally trounced the clouds in the sky and sat beaming upon their steel. Riders atop shaggy steeds spewed forth from the brown gate of the town, wearing mail and plate. Edmure spied the banners they brought from afar. A black horn banded in gold on a blue field.
"Goodbrother Ser, from a cadet branch." Edmure said, adjusting the sword on his scabbard.
"Maester Vyman hasn't taught you where they come from boy?" He only called him boy when he was annoyed.
The Maester had taught him the sigils for every Riverland house and every major house in all the realms. But there were always new ones, and always more cadets, more Grey Starks and more Green Fossoways. On the Iron Isles every captain was his own petty lord and every petty lord had their own petty banner, their own arms and their own little army.
"Twice our number?"
"And as well armored ser."
"Gormon has sent his son then."
He raised his hand in salute and in warning as the iron men arrived. They had good steel in the Islander fashion, plain and undecorated except for a curious brown sash they all wore. None wore armor for their legs spare long black boots. All had axes on their belts with thick painted shields slung to their saddle sides. Some had slung two monstrous axes with long handles to their backs, decorated in the intricate and grisly details. They rode shorter ponies as well so that every man among the River men was more than a hand taller in the saddle than every Ironborn.
They have not a youth among them. Edmure thought, aware of the men and squires at his own back. Looking towards his master knight. We wouldn't fare well in a melee here and now.
"Is your lord father too old to come down himself these days?" Ser Brynden asked.
Edmure's horse still fidgeted, but Coal stood as still as his rider.
"My father is long in the dying, Blackfish. He fought against the Stag and lord Grape in the straights. I treat in his place now and hold this town in his name." The man was senior to Edmure, with the craggy buffed features of a man long at sea. His guard, to a man held that same look about them.
Orcmont sends hardened killers to speak with their besiegers.
"You have the advantage of me, is this the elder or the younger of Gormon's boys I speak to?"
"Gorold is my name. You would do well to remember it, carry it on your lips and tell your king to go back to your Greenlander shores. Tuck your tails and run."
"The younger then… So, the elder sends you to defend an indefensible town while he cloisters himself in the family seat?" He looked to Edmure and winked "Hardly, a good brother I'd say." Ser Brynden guffawed at his own jest.
The Ironmen didn't share his mirth. Edmure was too nervous to laugh. They were close enough to see the whites in each others eyes. A short charge and they could clash steel. Edmure felt their hate, their violence, their horses fretting at their bits and their hands inching towards their belts.
"He will fall upon you with axe and blade in the night. Keep your scouts awake, lest he find you sleeping, old fish."
"I know your brother, he was a plucky little knave when I saw him last on the Stepstones and I know your father even better. It is why I offer your ilk generous terms. What will it cost? Surrender the town, bend your knees to King Robert and let us settle on hostages. You may keep your castles, at-least on this isle."
"A Greenlanders offers. Oathbreakers and farmers the lot of you are, men here pay with iron."
"Not for long now. Balons gamble has been lost. The kingdoms will remain united under one King. This backwater will see the light of the seven and your" - he spat – "frankly barbaric ways will be destroyed." His squires were privy to his patience, Edmure saw that this lordlings-get was not.
"Your armies will flounder on these shores and soon enough your kingdom too. It took dragons to burn our kings and break our castles, and even they dared not siege these isles."
"It is not dragons that you face now goat man, but those who slayed them. One sibling has broken your kings fleet and the other will soon break the crown upon his brow. You can make the choice to renounce any claim over this town, and swear to be his leal man."
"Your falsehoods do not sway me fishman. Pyke still stands as does Great and Old Wyk. We cast out our maesters long ago but the ravens fly better now that the grey rats do not bumble and breathe over each letter."
Ser Ryger interjected himself. "If you have the means to fly ravens do they not tell you of the host arrayed against you. Men arrive from the Westerlands, the North and the Riverlands by the day hundreds and thousands."
"Aye and what will you feed these thousands." The smirk he wore suggested he knew more than he let on. But the smirk he wore was false, that or he was stupid.
The backing of near half the regions goes into this campaign, why do you believe so fully that you can resist it? Edmure wondered if the tall tales were true, that the reavers were all as mad as their drowned priests bade them be.
"We will feed them the salted beef of the north, the grains of the south the ale from the Westerlands and the cheese from our own Tully lands if need be. It is not so easy as the old days reaver to do as you will. Hoare burned by Balerion's flame yes but do not forget who made him and all his sons flee to that bonfire of a castle."
There were more bandied words but nothing that amounted to much in the way of a peaceful resolution and Ser Brynden began to lose interest. Then, unceremoniously Coal defecated and turned and began to walk back. Edmure was relieved that he no longer had to listen to the drivel of the belligerent Gorold Goodbrother.
"They must see they cannot win, was there no better way to have done this Ser?" Edmure voiced his thoughts as they approached the small moat around camp.
"There always is, Hoster might have talked them into accepting terms but it is not likely. The boy has had his orders and if it is true that his father lays dying then cooler heads are not likely to prevail."
"You knew this older Goodbrother from the Stepstones Uncle?"
"Not well and not for long. He was a pirate then as I don't doubt he is now but he knew futility when he saw it. It makes no difference who leads them, tonight we will put a hundred knights atop their walls and the town will fall. You saw did you not, women and boys atop their battlements" – Edmure had - "Clement wants to earn his knighthood up there. I suspect he will acquit himself well enough."
The great man turned to him with a sudden jerk "Listen lad, you have not witnessed the sack of a town, and I have not done well to prepare you for it -it is a bloody affair- do only as I command nothing more. You have a penchant for bravery at the worst of times. Nay do not blush, it is true and why I took you as a squire"
Edmure flushed red as he remembering that argument between his lord father and Uncle. On that day while the Maester and his apprentices applied the poultice to his fresh wound, the brothers had paced around his bed. The milk of the poppy had dulled his senses but the words still swam murkily into his head.
"I send my stupid boy off with you and I lose him to some damned tribesman in the Vale or to the cold or a fall on some perilous mountain. He will remain here. I can lose no more sons."
"Why must you be such a fool brother?" Edmure remembered how his Uncle's anger shook even Vymans steady hands. "You know everything that happens within the seven realms but nothing of your own hearth and home." Even through the muddy haze of his poppy addled ears he remembered the way it shook the room.
"I know you will not take my son to some thrice damned gate in the vale and that he will not gallivant around the passes like some tramp knight's squire. He will learn to rule, he will wed and he will continue the family line. He will be dutiful."
"You bade Cat to be dutiful, and now you bid Lysa to be the same. They will dutifully be realms apart from their home. Don't force the family into your web of alliances and oaths Hoster. It will be the undoing of all of us."
Edmure's wound had scarred, it had scabbed and it had healed over the coming months but the rend between the Tully brothers, already so strained from Ser Bryndens broken betrothals never showed any signs of mending.
Edmure begged and pleaded to be allowed to leave and to squire for his Uncle at the gate. It did not work and he refused his lessons, refused his meals, refused even to laugh or smile in his fathers presence. It was the sullen act young boys often put up to get their way. By the time his lord father came around to the idea Robert's Rebellion had begun.
There were new banners at the camp when the party returned. Westermen, with golden badges upon their cloaks and easy smiles upon their lips, had overrun the camp. Chief among them stood a man cloaked in the red and gold finery of the rock. The lesser Lannister, men called him, though to look upon him one would think he was their sigil given flesh. Wild was his hair as it flowed down to his broad shoulders, his teeth showed when he smiled, though his golden brows seemed furrowed at all times.
"Blackfish!" He roared towards them. "A welcome sight among so many mud men."
Edmure looked around, he has managed to offend all present in a single statement.
"Ser Tygett, I see you have already made yourself comfortable in my camp though I sent you neither invitation nor request." The Lannister overtopped Ser Brynden by almost a hand. To say he was large was to say Harrenhal was only a castle.
"Come now," he said, affably enough "what is formality among two old comrades. I have come to help take these isles and brought good men to do so with you. Half a hundred men in good steel and a score of crossbows. Let us speak with less bustle around us, I have good plumwines more to your taste than even an arbor vintage. We can share."
They clasped hands and walked to the privacy of a tent striped blue and red in the finery of house Tully. Tygett too had a squire, Manyard Yew.
"You bring me wines when it is men I need Tygett."
"Is my mere presence not simply enough to make them quake? Come now, has the Lannister name fallen so far in my absence?" He considered, "I suppose it has."
"Your wine would taste much sweeter inside those town walls beside warm fire." Ser Brynden said, The Lannister smiled like a shadowcat.
"Id much rather a tavern wench to warm me than flame. It shall be an escalade then, like the old days." He scowled then,
"I tell it true, the men I have brought are not worth their salt in an escalade. You saw them, quill-mongers and green boys. My brother sent them with me so I can win no glory."
"Your brother knows not that I am here. How many men do you bring and how so are they armed."
"A dozen of them would I trust with us upon those walls with me as men-at-arms. My squire brought a few archers, they are good enough. The rest are rich boys from the merchant houses in lannisport, but it is not the steel in their hands that I doubt. In total half a hundred."
"None a-horse?"
"Nay, The storm caught us unaware on the crossing and then the Kraken spawn fell upon us. Our transport was taken with the bulk of our horseflesh. I thought the kings brother had smashed the curs but they scurry through these shoals like water striders."
"That is why we face them on land brave Tygett."
"Bring your picked men, though we will have no torches. My prickers have found an apt spot west of the town with good cover and no ditch. I suspect they could be expecting us but it is a gamble I am willing to take."
"I suppose one of your seconds will bring with them the bulk of the force once we have the wall?"
"That will be Ser Ryger, He is the captain of my brothers household guard. I trust him to keep discipline."
"Even at the sack?"
"That, is for the Gods to decide."